Growing scholarly attention to male caregivers has articulated the gendered nature of their labor and the burdens they experience. I build on this research by examining how male caregivers experience and reconcile the gap between the gender with which heterosexual, cisgendered men associate themselves and the female-gendering of caregiving labor. I draw upon 26 months of ethnographic research conducted in the Midwestern US with spousal caregivers of people living with early-onset dementia, using a case study approach to illustrate how people understand and give or deny the value of men’s caregiving. Particular attention is paid to the ways in which men’s caregiving labor is erased, notably in the caregivers’ own minds. As men make sense of their own caregiving experiences, they incorporate gendered understandings of caregiving. Doing so renders certain, often intimate aspects of their own labor invisible and devalues the work they do acknowledge as less legitimate caregiving labor.
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